Mrs. Burgos in Europe to plead for justice for son, desaparecidos

From 15 to 20 November, Edita Burgos will be in Belgium, as part of her visit to Europe to look for support for her plea for justice for her son Jonas, a victim of enforced disappearance in the Philippines. He disappeared two years ago. Jonas Burgos has become the symbol of the problematic issue of enforced disappearances in the Philippines.

During her stay in Belgium, Edita Burgos will attract the attention of European and Belgian politicians, human rights organisations, solidarity movements and the general public towards the human sights situation in the Philippines. She will be available for interviews.

Her visit to Belgium coincides with the launching of the annual campaign “Stop the Killings” , a platform that denounces political murders and enforced disappearances in the Philippines, Colombia and Guatemala.

The platform urges the Belgian government to take concrete action by *ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances*. After the convention had been adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2006, only 15 countries have ratified it. A minimum of 20 ratifications is required for the United Nations convention to come into effect.

A result of the work of hundreds of families of disappeared persons, like the Burgoses, the convention will be an effective instrument to help prevent enforced disappearances, to shed light on the crimes, punish the ones guilty and bring justice to the victims and their families. The ratification and effective implementation of this convention is an urgent necessity for Jonas Burgos as well as for thousands of others.

On 28 April 2007, her son was having lunch in a mall in Quezon City, Metro Manila, when he was abducted by four armed man and a woman who introduced themselves as policemen. Witnesses said he was then handcuffed and forcibly dragged into a maroon Toyota Revo with the license plate TAB 194. All this happened in broad daylight, among hundreds of witnesses. The license plate of the vehicle with which Jonas had been abducted was later traced back to one impounded at the military headquarters in the province Bulacan.

Jonas Burgos was 37 years old when he disappeared. Being an agronomist, he had been given training on techniques of biological agriculture since 1998 to members of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Bulacan, an organization within the union of progressive Filipino farmers. He is the son of the late Jose “Joe” Burgos Jr., press freedom icon and pioneer of the alternative press during the dictatorship of Marcos. Edita, his mother, has not been able to record any effort by the Filipino government to start the search for her son, although she puts every effort in denouncing disappearances in her function of president of Desaparecidos, the association of families of disappeared. The disappearance of Jonas thus symbolizes the enforced disappearances that are widely known throughout the country.

In the Philippines, journalists, union leaders, workers, peasants, human rights defenders, lawyers, students and others are victims of human rights violations. In the past eight years, since president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has come to power, human rights organizations have counted 1013 political murders and 202 politically motivated disappearances. These numbers mean that the current president is the worst of all, including the dictator Marcos. With the Philippine presidential elections approaching in may 2010, the people fear an increase of the number of human rights violations.

In many cases the military is strongly involved, according to Filipino human rights organizations, international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and also Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Despite his reports, the assassinations and disappearances continue. For this reason, the platform /Stop the Killings /has been created in Belgium. Through this platform, union, NGOs and many other organizations work together to denounce political killings and disappearances.